uela

What rate is good, and what is exceptional to buy UA miles?
Does it make sense to buy miles full 12 months before travel begins?

WineCountryUA

The best rate UA sells miles for is something around 2 cent per mile. Will not weight in on if that is good or exceptional -- it depends on how you plan to use the miles and the value you place on that use.
Consolidated Award / Premier Accelerator questions
United Airlines Award/Premier Accelerator Rates [2019]

It is not a good idea to hoard or stockpile miles and it is a worse idea to purchase miles long before use.

Be aware UA has announced a change in the mileage award system that many consider a potential major devaluation
Changes To UA MileagePlus Coming On NOV 15, 2019 (Dynamic UA Awards - No More Chart)

Kacee

I would never purchase miles without a specific, immediate use in mind.

The currently available purchase price (2 cpm) is higher than the value I would place on a generic UA mile (1.5 cpm).

mahasamatman

United has never offered miles at what I would consider reasonable.

jsloan

username

A good rate is when the miles you buy for your trip cost less than buying a ticket. Since the miles needed for trips after 15 November on United is no longer predictable, it has made the math a lot harder.

As other have said, it only makes sense if you need a few miles to top-up and get you a ticket that you will book immediately.

narvik

Some ~5 years ago, I used to buy quite a few miles for specific award trips with interesting & complex routings for personal travel, and it worked out great.
Nowadays, that is NOT the case anymore.
For travel after November 2019: FORGETABOUDIT!

BearX220

This X 100. The days of banking miles for some unknown future opportunity, whatever the acquisition cost, are over. It is foolish to buy any currency when its value is black-boxed.

In the new dynamic-pricing world, you could spend, say, $1,000 buying miles for future use, then later learn that it takes 2X the purchased miles to get an award ticket you can buy outright for $900. Maybe. Who knows? The only way to win is not to play.

username

This of course is the whole selling point of the accumulation part (not the status part) of frequent flyer programs. Still don't quite understand why UA (and other carriers/hotel chains) are doing this and what they plan next.

BearX220

Meta view: they're discarding loyalty as an ROI tool in favor of short-term profit maximization and customer exploitation. To the extent they still imply there are broad-gauge rewards for loyal buying behavior, it is somewhere between bait-and-switch deception and operational fraud. "What they plan next" will depend on whether they have to modify this approach in the next protracted recession to stimulate business, or whether the anti-competitive oligopoly is now so blastproof, they won't need to bother. I tend to think the latter.

jonsail

About the only great use of United Miles that I can see now is using miles for a one way close in business or first class ticket on certain routes. For example, a friend recently booked a Las Vegas to Lima, Peru one way First Class on Copa Air for 30,000 United miles. Likewise LAX or SF to some Asian cities, booked very close in can be a great deal in business class with United Miles. But for myself and Mrs. Jonsail we have been using United Miles mainly at a value a little over a penny each. Therefore, unless you are buying miles for a special offering, I wouldn't buy them.

cjermain

This would be incredibly short-sighted.

A decade ago, before airlines figured out how to make money (helped by low oil prices), I recall there being some calls to spin off the loyalty business because it was the only thing that was consistently profitable. That is, the flying planes part of the business was dragging down the loyalty part, and separated they would be worth more than together. Presumably, one of the reasons for separating them is that when the flying-plans part is in charge, they don't concentrate on getting the most of the loyalty program. For example, they have an incentive to devalue miles, as they are seen as a liability if you've got to stuff the mile-owners in a tube and take them somewhere. A spun-off loyalty program would do everything to protect the value of their product, which means protecting against devaluations. And if they do a good job selling and marketing a good product, the airline sells more miles to them and everyone wins. Sadly, this divesting did not happen.

exwannabe

I could not imagine buying miles in any airlines program at over $0.01/mile unless I had a near term use.

I do think the .01 floor is safe for several years going forward. It is really getting baked in to consumers that this is the "basic" value or a point/mile. Anything above is a deal, anything below is evil.

There are ways to "buy" at under .01 at times.

VegasGambler

There is a lot of very risk-averse behavior being suggested here. There is clearly some price at which it makes sense to bank miles. The question is, what is that price? (Whether you ever have the opportunity to buy them at that price is a different question)

I'm going to go out on a limb and throw 1c out there. As long as I didn't have more than, say, half a million, I'd probably pay 1c for them.

MSPeconomist